This disclosure relates generally to telecommunications systems and, more particularly, to providing connectivity for management communications between synchronous optical network (SONET) entities over multi-vendor, multi-carrier SONET networks.
SONET (and the counterpart Synchronous Digital Hierarchy (SDH)) is a widely used transport technology in carrier networks, and the deployment of SONET based network equipment accounts for a significant portion of some networks. As the use of SONET equipment increases, the number of vendors involved in designing and manufacturing SONET equipment also increases.
Although vendors are generally supposed to comply with SONET standards to ensure that their equipment is compatible with that of other vendors, SONET equipment from different vendors may not feature such interoperability. For example, SONET data communication channels (DCCS) may use different protocol stacks, such as the Open System Interconnection (OSI) standard or the Transmission Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) standard. Furthermore, different vendors may implement a protocol stack using proprietary mechanisms, and so the various implementations of the same protocol stack may not be interoperable. For reasons such as this, some SONET systems are even implemented with deactivated DCCs.
Accordingly, what is needed is a system and method for providing connectivity for management communications over multi-vendor, multi-carrier SONET networks.